Thou must bend to the will of the A-listers! ;)This one's for you, Steve.
In all seriousness, it's an interesting exercise to track the progress of a meme. At this early stage in the evolution of the blogosphere, we have a unique opportunity to scrutinize the machinations of our own growth. Forward-thinkers like Scoble, Rubel, et al., are using their "followers" as elements in a grand online chemistry experiment:
"What makes a meme? How fast can it grow? What's the average lifespan of the zeitgeist? How does an early jump on a 'memeowagon' impact site traffic for an A-Lister, a B-Lister, a Z-lister? Which 'memetrackers' are best at identifying and adding momentum to a meme? How do memes impact 'real' news cycles?" etc.
Surely it won't be long before some Web 2.0 brainiac creates an aggregated, global "mememap" akin to this (way-cool) one for Google News.
Memo to self: breememe.